8/21/2000 @ 12:00AM

"This Is Not About Charity"

IT IS A MILD SUMMER DAY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, and Anna Ouroumian faces a tough crowd. The 100 high school students have seen it all: gang warfare, domestic violence, racism, drug abuse.

But they haven’t seen Anna. She tells of life in Beirut–how her alcoholic father died when she was a baby, her mother was too ill to raise her, and her uncle left her at a bullet-riddled orphanage when she was a toddler. She figures she was 3 the first time she saw someone get killed on the street.

That’s exactly the kind of epiphany Ouroumian, 28, aims to provoke. Then comes her real point: Despite the travails, she thrived–and so can you, kids. At age 17 she arrived alone in the U.S. Five years later she graduated at the top of her class at UCLA and detoured into philanthropy; one day she aims to get a Harvard M.B.A. and pursue a career in business.

A compact Gloria Estefan look-alike, Ouroumian runs the nonprofit Academy of Business Leadership, a tiny charity that drills into kids the notion that they can create their own wealth. “I tell you guys, I know I’m going to be very rich one day,” she exults, throwing her arms out wide. “Maybe someday we can do business together.”

Over a seven-week summer session, the youngsters break into groups and write 50-page business plans for their dream companies. Recent pitches: a 17th-century-themed bed-and-breakfast, a drive-through espresso cafe and an auto parts outfit for teenagers with souped-up cars. Students must support their plans with real-world data–office rent, wages, taxes, insurance. They visit Los Angeles companies and hear success stories from executives who came from nothing, and those who came from privilege. They run imaginary $100,000 stock portfolios and compete for cash prizes. Some get mentors and internships.

“I tell them, ‘This is not about charity. I don’t feel sorry for you, just like I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,’ ” Ouroumian says. Never be ashamed of where you come from, she preaches. “ I didn’t choose where I came from–but I definitely chose where I am today.”

ABL was formed in 1992 by an executive at SouthernCalifornia Edison, where it still occupies free office space. In early 1998 Ouroumian was hired to revive the tiny charity (full-time staff: three). It had run up a $40,000 deficit, and even its own board worried it wouldn’t survive. Since then she has doubled annual fundraising to $700,000, tripled student enrollment to 329 and added a year-round mentoring program. Six college campuses participate, up from just two. Her salary has risen from $45,000 to $64,000.

Once or twice a day the kids hear from a businessman like Richard Hartnack, vice chairman of Union Bank of California. Ouroumian buttonholed him after a rubber-chicken luncheon in Los Angeles. “People come up to me with that kind of stuff all the time,” Hartnack says. “I thought, ‘Anybody who’s this good this young deserves an audience.’” Joan Payden, president of Payden & Rygel, which manages $32 billion in assets, became an adviser after Ouroumian looked her dead in the eyes and said, “Joan, what ABL really needs is a champion.” Now Payden hires some of the kids as interns.

ABL graduate Anna Laguna, 19, is the first member of her family to attend college. She earns $16 an hour at J.P. Morgan & Co. in downtown Los Angeles, while attending Cerritos College. “Because of ABL, I have a future. Before, I wasn’t even planning on going to college,” she says.

Anna Ouroumian can empathize. When she was growing up in Beirut, “None of us could see a future for ourselves,” she says. Her first orphanage had no electricity or running water. In grade school she moved to an orphanage on the battle line dividing warring Christians and Muslims. The kids slept in an empty theater that also served as a makeshift hospital. The wounded cried in the night. Bullets ricocheted overhead.

As a teenager Ouroumian studied at the American University of Beirut on scholarship, but the war dragged on. “I just could not take it. I was going to lose my mind. Ihad survived, and what for?”

A priest told her to escape. So she took an illegal trip by fishing boat into the Mediterranean, amid sporadic shelling, and clambered onto a vessel bound for Cyprus. Refugees swarmed the U.S. Embassy, but she talked her way past the hordes and got a visa.

When Ouroumian flew to the States weeks later, she barely spoke English. She carried with her two books in French–a biography of Ronald Reagan, and one promising “everything you can learn at the Harvard Business School.” She kissed the ground after landing in Los Angeles.

Anna had one lead: A nun from her orphanage was posted at a convent in Glendale, Calif. There she went, and the nun let her sleep on a rollaway bed in a classroom. In exchange, Ouroumian ran the convent’s summer school.

At UCLA she landed an internship with her hero, the retired President Reagan. At graduation, three years later, she was chosen as one of four outstanding seniors in a class of 10,500. She had planned to become an investment banker but was drawn to charity work at President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program and other groups.